Creation Of Knowledge

  • What is Knowledge?
  • How do we construct it?
  • Where does it reside?

Knowledge is a term which is broadly used in our society today. Conceptually, everybody has their own view of what knowledge is. There is even a whole network on the television dedicated to knowledge aptly called The Knowledge Network. However, the term knowledge can be narrowed down.

Knowledge is created through the sharing of experiences and the combination of scientific/theoretical tacit and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is established from tried and proven experiments on the broadest spectrum and then is translated into explicit knowledge through books and publications. Therefore, if one was to simply read a book containing explicit knowledge then he or she would posses that knowledge. On the other hand, if the book was on auto repair, the person could have immense difficulty with actually fixing a car, even though he has read the book on auto repair. This goes to show that the creation of knowledge and knowledge itself lies in tacit knowledge and ones ability to transfer explicit information into the highest level of comprehension and understanding, that being tacit knowledge.

Albert Einstein said, “Information is not knowledge”. This is partly true; it is more a case that knowledge is the enhanced version of information. Information is absorbed, and then becomes integrated with other information, personal experiences and previous skills. Knowledge can be built upon to add more knowledge, similar to a scaffold. People take in new information organizing it within their brains using their past experiences, previous knowledge and skills and adapting it to their actions and situations.

Knowledge comes from within a person and everybody has unique knowledge, although it can be similar to other people’s knowledge. Knowledge most likely resides in the brain and nervous system of each person, somewhere in that complex structure between the nerve impulses in the synapses, knowledge breaths to life. The nervous system is an amazing organ that can take information and experiences in then to put them together to create knowledge.